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1916 

MAIN 



ILF 




Bltea Perry 




THE LIBRARY 

OF 

THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED BY 

PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 




FISHING WITH A WORM 



FISHING 

WITH A WORM 

BY 

BLISS PERRY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

MDCCCCXVI 



COPYRIGHT, 1904 AND 1916, BY BLISS PERRY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iQitt 



5 A 




FISHING 
WITH A WORM 






M360356 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

" The last fish I caught was with a worm." IZAAK 
WALTON. 

A DEFECTIVE logic is the born fisherman s por 
tion. He is a pattern of inconsistency. He does 
the things which he ought not to do, and he leaves 
undone the things which other people think he 
ought to do. He observes the wind when he 
should be sowing, and he regards the clouds, with 
temptation tugging familiarly at his heartstrings, 
when he might be grasping the useful sickle. It 
is a wonder that there is so much health in him. 
A sorrowing political economist remarked to me 
in early boyhood, as a jolly red-bearded neighbor, 
followed by an abnormally fat dog, sauntered 
past us for his nooning : " That man is the best 
carpenter in town, but he will leave the most 
important job whenever he wants to go fishing." 
I stared at the sinful carpenter, who swung along 
leisurely in the May sunshine, keeping just ahead 
of his dog. To leave one s job in order to go 
fishing ! How illogical ! 

[ 3 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

Years bring the reconciling mind. The world 
grows big enough to include within its scheme 
both the instructive political economist and the 
truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical 
behavior seems harder to the man than to the 
child. For example, I climbed up to my den 
under the eaves last night a sour, black sea- 
fog lying all about, and the December sleet crack 
ling against the window-panes in order to 
varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be 
put in order in September, when the fishing closes, 
or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod 
in December proves that one possesses either a 
dilatory or a childishly anticipatory mind. But 
before uncorking the varnish bottle, it occurred 
to me to examine a dog-eared, water-stained 
fly-book, to guard against the ravages of pos 
sible moths. This interlude proved fatal to the 
varnishing. A half hour went happily by in 
rearranging the flies. Then, with a fisherman s 
lack of sequence, as I picked out here and there 
a plain snell-hook from the gaudy feathered 
ones, I said to myself with a generous glow at 
the heart : " Fly-fishing has had enough sacred 
poets celebrating it already. Is n t there a good 

[ 4 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

deal to be said, after all, for fishing with a 
worm ? " 

Could there be a more illogical proceeding? 
And here follows the treatise, a Defense of 
Results, an Apology for Opportunism, con 
ceived in agreeable procrastination, devoted to 
the praise of the inconsequential angleworm, and 
dedicated to a childish memory of a whistling 
carpenter and his fat dog. 

Let us face the worst at the very beginning. 
It shall be a shameless example of fishing under 
conditions that make the fly a mockery. Take 
the Taylor Brook, " between the roads," on the 
headwaters of the Lamoille. The place is a jun 
gle. The swamp maples and cedars were felled a 
generation ago, and the tops were trimmed into 
the brook. The alders and moosewood are higher 
than your head ; on every tiny knoll the fir bal 
sams have gained a footing, and creep down, im 
penetrable, to the edge of the water. In the open 
spaces the Joe-Pye weed swarms. In two minutes 
after leaving the upper road you have scared a 
mink or a rabbit, and you have probably lost the 
brook. Listen ! It is only a gurgle here, droning 
along, smooth and dark, under the tangle of cedar- 

[ 5 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

tops and the shadow of the balsams. Follow the 
sound cautiously. There, beyond the Joe-Pye 
weed, and between the stump and the cedar-top, 
is a hand s breadth of black water. Fly-casting 
is impossible in this maze of dead and living 
branches. Shorten your line to two feet, or even 
less, bait your hook with a worm, and drop it 
gingerly into that gurgling crevice of water. Be 
fore it has sunk six inches, if there is not one 
of those black-backed, orange-bellied, Taylor 
Brook trout fighting with it, something is wrong 
with your worm or with you. For the trout are 
always there, sheltered by the brushwood that 
makes this half mile of fishing " not worth while." 
Below the lower road the Taylor Brook becomes 
uncertain water. For half a mile it yields only 
fiugerlings, for no explainable reason ; then there 
are two miles of clean fishing through the deep 
woods, where the branches are so high that you 
can cast a fly again if you like, and there are 
long pools, where now and then a heavy fish will 
rise; then comes a final half mile through the 
alders, where you must wade, knee to waist deep, 
before you come to the bridge and the river. 
Glorious fishing is sometimes to be had here, 
[ 6 1 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

especially if you work down the gorge at twi 
light, casting a white miller until it is too dark 
to see. But alas, there is a well-worn path along 
the brook, and often enough there are the very 
footprints of the " fellow ahead of you," signs as 
disheartening to the fisherman as ever were the 
footprints on the sand to Robinson Crusoe. 

But " between the roads " it is " too much 
trouble to fish ; " and there lies the salvation of 
the humble fisherman who disdains not to use 
the crawling worm, nor, for that matter, to crawl 
himself, if need be, in order to sneak under the 
boughs of some overhanging cedar that casts a 
perpetual shadow upon the sleepy brook. Lying 
here at full length, with no elbow-room to manage 
the rod, you must occasionally even unjoint your 
tip, and fish with that, using but a dozen inches 
of line, and not letting so much as your eyebrows 
show above the bank. Is it a becoming attitude 
for a middle-aged citizen of the world ? That de 
pends upon how the fish are biting. Holing a put 
looks rather ridiculous also, to the mere observer, 
but it requires, like brook-fishing with a tip only, 
a very delicate wrist, perfect tactile sense, and a 
fine disregard of appearances. 
[ 7 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

There are some fishermen who always fish as 
if they were being photographed. The Taylor 
Brook " between the roads " is not for them. To 
fish it at all is back-breaking, trouser-tearing 
work ; to see it thoroughly fished is to learn new 
lessons in the art of angling. To watch R., for 
example, steadily filling his six-pound creel from 
that unlikely stream, is like watching Sargent 
paint a portrait. R. weighs two hundred and ten. 
Twenty years ago he was a famous amateur 
pitcher, and among his present avocations are 
violin playing, which is good for the wrist, taxi 
dermy, which is good for the eye, and shooting 
woodcock, which before the days of the new Na 
ture Study used to be thought good for the whole 
man. K. began as a fly-fisherman, but by dint of 
passing his summers near brooks where fly-fishing 
is impossible, he has become a stout-hearted 
apologist for the worm. His apparatus is most 
singular. It consists of a very long, cheap rod, 
stout enough to smash through bushes, and with 
the stiffest tip obtainable. The lower end of the 
butt, below the reel, fits into the socket of a huge 
extra butt of bamboo, which E. carries uncon 
cernedly. To reach a distant hole, or to fish the 

I 8 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

lower end of a ripple, K. simply locks his reel, 
slips on the extra butt, and there is a fourteen- 
foot rod ready for action. He fishes with a line 
unbelievably short, and a Kendal hook far too 
big ; and when a trout jumps for that hook, R. 
wastes no time in manoeuvring for position. The 
unlucky fish is simply " derricked," to borrow 
a word from Theodore, most saturnine and pro 
fane of Moosehead guides. 

" Shall I play him awhile ? " shouted an excited 
sportsman to Theodore, after hooking his first 
big trout. 

" no! "growled Theodore in disgust. "Just 

derrick him right into the canoe! " A heroic 
method, surely ; though it once cost me the best 
square-tail I ever hooked, for Theodore had for 
gotten the landing-net, and the gut broke in his 
fingers as he tried to swing the fish aboard. But 
with these lively quarter-pounders of the Taylor 
Brook, derricking is a safer procedure. Indeed, 
I have sat dejectedly on the far end of a log, 
after fishing the hole under it in vain, and seen 
the mighty R. wade downstream close behind me, 
adjust that comical extra butt, and jerk a couple 
of half-pound trout from under the very log on 

[ 9 ] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

which I was sitting. His device on this occasion, 
as I well remember, was to pass his hook but 
once through the middle of a big worm, let the 
worm sink to the bottom, and crawl along it at 
his leisure. The trout could not resist. 

Once, and once only, have I come near equal 
ing K. s record, and the way he beat me then is 
the justification for a whole philosophy of worm- 
fishing. We were on this very Taylor Brook, and 
at five in the afternoon both baskets were two 
thirds full. By count I had just one more fish 
than he. It was raining hard. " You fish down 
through the alders," said E. magnanimously. 
" I 11 cut across and wait for you at the sawmill. 
I don t want to get any wetter, on account of my 
rheumatism." 

This was rather barefaced kindness, for 
whose rheumatism was ever the worse for an 
other hour s fishing ? But I weakly accepted it. 
I coveted three or four good trout to top off with, 
that was all. So I tied on a couple of flies, 
and began to fish the alders, wading waist deep 
in the rapidly rising water, down the long green 
tunnel under the curving boughs. The brook 
fairly smoked with the rain, by this time, but 

[10] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

when did one fail to get at least three or four 
trout out of this best half mile of the lower brook ? 
Yet I had no luck. I tried one fly after another, 
and then, as a forlorn hope, though it some 
times has a magic of its own, I combined a 
brown hackle for the tail fly with a twisting worm 
on the dropper. Not a rise ! I thought of K. 
sitting patiently in the saw mill, and I fished 
more conscientiously than ever. 

" Venture as warily, use the same skill, 
Do your best, whether winning or losing it, 
If you choose to play ! is my principle." 

Even those lines, which by some subtle telepathy 
of the trout brook murmur themselves over and 
over to me in the waning hours of an unlucky 
day, brought now no consolation. There was sim 
ply not one fish to be had, to any fly in the book, 
out of that long, drenching, darkening tunnel. 
At last I climbed out of the brook, by the bridge. 
R. was sitting on the fence, his neck and ears 
carefully turtled under his coat collar, the smoke 
rising and the rain dripping from the inverted 
bowl of his pipe. He did not seem to be worrying 
about his rheumatism. 

" What luck? " he asked. 
[11] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

" None at all," I answered morosely. " Sorry 
to keep you waiting." 

"That s all right," remarked K. "What do 
you think I ve been doing ? I Ve been fishing 
out of the saw-mill window just to kill time. 
There was a patch of floating sawdust there, 
kind of unlikely place for trout, anyway, but I 
thought I d put on a worm and let him crawl 
around a little." He opened his creel as he spoke. 

" But I did n t look for a pair of em," he added. 
And there, on top of his smaller fish, were as 
pretty a pair of three-quarter-pound brook trout 
as were ever basketed. 

" I m afraid you got pretty wet," said K. 
kindly. 

" I don t mind that," I replied. And I did n t. 
What I minded was the thought of an hour s vain 
wading in that roaring stream, whipping it with fly 
after fly, while K., the foreordained fisherman, 
was sitting comfortably in a sawmill, and der- 
ricking that pair of three-quarter-pounders in 
through the window ! I had ventured more warily 
than he, and used, if not the same skill, at least 
the best skill at my command. My conscience 
was clear, but so was his ; and he had had the 

[12] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

drier skin and the greater magnanimity and the 
biggest fish besides. There is much to be said, in 
a world like ours, for taking the world as you find 
it and for fishing with a worm. 

One s memories of such fishing, however agree 
able they may be, are not to be identified with a 
defense of the practice. Yet, after all, the most 
effective defense of worm-fishing is the concrete re 
collection of some brook that could be fished best 
or only in that way, or the image of a particular 
trout that yielded to the temptation of an angle 
worm after you had flicked fly after fly over him 
in vain. Indeed, half the zest of brook fishing is 
in your campaign for " individuals," as the 
Salvation Army workers say, not merely for a 
basketful of fish qua fish, but for a series of indi 
vidual trout which your instinct tells you ought 
to lurk under that log or be hovering in that rip 
ple. How to get him, by some sportsmanlike pro 
cess, is the question. If he will rise to some fly 
in your book, few fishermen will deny that the 
fly is the more pleasurable weapon. Dainty, lur 
ing, beautiful toy, light as thistle-down, falling 
where you will it to fall, holding when the leader 
[13] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

tightens and sings like the string of a violin, the 
artificial fly represents the poetry of angling. 
Given the gleam of early morning on some wide 
water, a heavy trout breaking the surface as he 
curves and plunges, with the fly holding well, 
with the right sort of rod in your fingers, and the 
right man in the other end of the canoe, and you 
perceive how easy is that Emersonian trick of 
making the pomp of emperors ridiculous. 

But angling s honest prose, as represented by 
the lowly worm, has also its exalted moments. 
" The last fish I caught was with a worm," says 
the honest Walton, and so say I. It was the last 
evening of last August. The dusk was settling 
deep upon a tiny meadow, scarcely ten rods from 
end to end. The rank bog grass, already drenched 
with dew, bent over the narrow, deep little brook 
so closely that it could not be fished except with 
a double-shotted, baited hook, dropped delicately 
between the heads of the long grasses. Under 
neath this canopy the trout were feeding, taking 
the hook with a straight downward tug, as they 
made for the hidden bank. It was already twi 
light when I began, and before I reached the 
black belt of woods that separated the meadow 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

from the lake, the swift darkness of the North 
Country made it impossible to see the hook. A 
short half hour s fishing only, and behold nearly 
twenty good trout derrieked into a basket until 
then sadly empty. Your rigorous fly-fisherman 
would have passed that grass-hidden brook in 
disdain, but it proved a treasure for the humble. 
Here, indeed, there was no question of individu 
ally-minded fish, but simply a neglected brook, 
full of trout which could be reached with the 
baited hook only. In more open brook-fishing it 
is always a fascinating problem to decide how to 
fish a favorite pool or ripple, for much depends 
upon the hour of the day, the light, the height of 
water, the precise period of the spring or summer. 
But after one has decided upon the best theoreti 
cal procedure, how often the stupid trout prefers 
some other plan ! And when you have missed a fish 
that you counted upon landing, what solid satis 
faction is still possible for you, if you are philoso 
pher enough to sit down then and there, eat your 
lunch, smoke a meditative pipe, and devise a new 
campaign against that particular fish! To get 
another rise from him after lunch is a triumph of 
diplomacy ; to land him is nothing short of states- 

[151 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

manship. For sometimes he will jump furiously 
at a fly, for very devilishness, without ever mean 
ing to take it, and then, wearying suddenly of 
his gymnastics, he will snatch sulkily at a grass 
hopper, beetle, or worm. Trout feed upon an 
extraordinary variety of crawling things, as all 
fishermen know who practice the useful habit of 
opening the first two or three fish they catch, to 
see what food is that day the favorite. But here, 
as elsewhere in this world, the best things lie 
nearest, and there is no bait so killing, week in 
and week out, as your plain garden or golf -green 
angleworm. 

Walton s list of possible worms is impressive, 
and his directions for placing them upon the 
hook have the placid completeness that belonged 
to his character. Yet in such matters a little non 
conformity may be encouraged. No two men or 
boys dig bait in quite the same way, though all 
share, no doubt, the singular elation which gilds 
that grimy occupation with the spirit of romance. 
The mind is really occupied, not with the wrig 
gling red creatures in the lumps of earth, but 
with the stout fish which each worm may capture, 
just as a saint might rejoice in the squalor of this 
[16] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

world as a preparation for the glories of the world 
to come. Nor do any two experienced fishermen 
hold quite the same theory as to the best mode of 
baiting the hook. There are a hundred ways, 
each of them good. As to the best hook for 
worm-fishing, you will find dicta in every cata 
logue of fishing tackle, but size and shape and 
tempering are qualities that should vary with the 
brook, the season, and the fisherman. Should 
one use a three-foot leader, or none at all ? Whose 
rods are best for bait-fishing, granted that all of 
them should be stiff enough in the tip to lift a 
good fish by dead strain from a tangle of brush 
or logs ? Such questions, like those pertaining to 
the boots or coat which one should wear, the style 
of bait-box one should carry, or the brand of to 
bacco best suited for smoking in the wind, are 
topics for unending discussion among the serious 
minded around the camp-fire. Much edification 
is in them, and yet they are but prudential max 
ims after all. They are mere moralities of the 
Franklin or Chesterfield variety, counsels of 
worldly wisdom, but they leave the soul untouched. 
A man may have them at his finger s ends and 
be no better fisherman at bottom; or he may, 
[17] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

like R., ignore most of the admitted rules and 
come home with a full basket. It is a sufficient 
defense of fishing with a worm to pronounce the 
truism that no man is a complete angler until he 
has mastered all the modes of angling. Lovely 
streams, lonely and enticing, but impossible to 
fish with a fly, await the fisherman who is not 
too proud to use, with a man s skill, the same 
unpretentious tackle which he began with as a 
boy. 

But ah, to fish with a worm, and then not catch 
your fish ! To fail with a fly is no disgrace : your 
art may have been impeccable, your patience 
faultless to the end. But the philosophy of worm- 
fishing is that of Results, of having something 
tangible in your basket when the day s work is 
done. It is a plea for Compromise, for cutting 
the coat according to the cloth, for taking the 
world as it actually is. The fly-fisherman is a 
natural Foe of Compromise. He throws to the 
trout a certain kind of lure ; an they will take 
it, so ; if not, adieu. He knows no middle path. 

" This high man, aiming at a million, 
Misses an unit." 

[18] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

The raptures and the tragedies of consistency 
are his. He is a scorner of the ground. All honor 
to him ! When he comes back at nightfall and 
says happily, " I have never cast a line more per 
fectly than I have to-day," it is almost indecent 
to peek into his creel. It is like rating Colonel 
Newcome by his bank account. 

But the worm-fisherman is no such proud and 
isolated soul. He is a "low man " rather than a 
high one ; he honestly cares what his friends will 
think when they look into his basket to see what 
he has to show for his day s sport. He watches 
the Foe of Compromise men go stumbling forward 
and superbly falling, while he, with less inflexible 
courage, manages to keep his feet. He wants to 
score, and not merely to give a pretty exhibition 
of base-running. At the Harvard- Yale football 
game of 1903 the Harvard team showed superior 
strength in rushing the ball ; they carried it almost 
to the Yale goal line repeatedly, but they could 
not, for some reason, take it over. In the instant 
of absolute need, the Yale line held, and when 
the Yale team had to score in order to win, they 
scored. As the crowd streamed out of the Sta 
dium, a veteran Harvard alumnus said : " This 
[19] 



FISHING WITH A WOKM 

news will cause great sorrow in one home I know 
of, until they learn by to-morrow s papers that 
the Harvard team acquitted itself creditably." 
Exactly. Given one team bent upon acquitting 
itself creditably, and another team determined to 
win, which will be victorious ? The stay-at-homes 
on the Yale campus that day were not curious to 
know whether their team was acquitting itself 
creditably, but whether it was winning the game. 
Every other question than that was to those young 
Philistines merely a fine-spun irrelevance. They 
took the Cash and let the Credit go. 

There is much to be said, no doubt, for the 
Harvard veteran s point of view. The proper 
kind of credit may be a better asset for eleven 
boys than any championship ; and to fish a bit of 
water consistently and skillfully, with your best 
flies and in your best manner, is perhaps achieve 
ment enough. So says the Foe of Compromise, 
at least. But the Yale spirit will be prying into 
the basket in search of fish ; it prefers concrete 
results. If all men are by nature either Plato- 
nists or Aristotelians, fly-fishermen or worm-fish 
ermen, how difficult it is for us to do one another 
justice ! Differing in mind, in aim and method, 

[20] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

how shall we say infallibly that this man or that 
is wrong ? To fail with Plato for companion may 
be better than to succeed with Aristotle. But one 
thing is perfectly clear : there is no warrant for 
Compromise but in Success. Use a worm if you 
will, but you must have fish to show for it, if you 
would escape the finger of scorn. If you find 
yourself camping by an unknown brook, and are 
deputed to catch the necessary trout for break 
fast, it is wiser to choose the surest bait. The 
crackle of the fish in the frying-pan will atone 
for any theoretical defect in your method. But 
to choose the surest bait, and then to bring back 
no fish, is unforgivable. Forsake Plato if you must, 
but you may do so only at the price of justi 
fying yourself in the terms of Aristotelian arith 
metic. The college president who abandoned his 
college in order to run a cotton mill was free to 
make his own choice of a calling ; but he was 
never pardoned for bankrupting the mill. If one 
is bound to be a low man rather than an impracti 
cal idealist, he should at least make sure of his 
vulgar success. 

Is all this but a disguised defense of pot-hunt 
ing? No. There is no possible defense of pot- 
[21] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

hunting, whether it be upon a trout brook or in 
the stock market. Against fish or men, one should 
play the game fairly. Yet for that matter some 
of the most skillful fly-fishermen I have known 
were pot-hunters at heart, and some of the most 
prosaic - looking merchants were idealists com 
pared to whom Shelley was but a dreaming boy. 
All depends upon the spirit with which one makes 
his venture. I recall a boy of five who gravely 
watched his father tramp off after rabbits, gun 
on shoulder and beagle in leash. Thereupon he 
shouldered a wooden sword, and dragging his 
reluctant black kitten by a string, sallied forth 
upon the dusty Vermont road " to get a lion for 
breakfast." That is the true sporting temper ! 
Let there be but a fine idealism in the quest, and 
the particular object is unessential. " A true fish 
erman s happiness," says Mr. Cleveland, " is not 
dependent upon his luck." It depends upon his 
heart. 

No doubt all amateur fishing is but " play," 
as the psychologists soberly term it : not a neces 
sary, but a freely assumed activity, born of sur 
plusage of vitality. Nobody, not even a carpenter 
wearied of his job, has to go fishing unless he 

[22] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

wants to. He may indeed find himself breakfast- 
less in camp, and obliged to betake himself to the 
brook, but then he need not have gone into the 
woods at all. Yet if he does decide to fish, let 
him 

" Venture as warily, use the same skill, 
Do his best, ..." 

whatever variety of tackle he may choose. He 
can be a whole-souled sportsman with the poorest 
equipment, or a mean " trout-hog " with the most 
elaborate. 

Only, in the name of gentle Izaak himself, let 
him be a complete angler ; and let the man be a 
passionate amateur of all the arts of life, despis 
ing none of them, and using all of them for his 
soul s good and for the joy of his fellows. If he 
be, so to speak, but a worm-fisherman, a fol 
lower of humble occupations, and pledged to un- 
romantic duties, let him still thrill with the 
pleasures of the true sportsman. To make the 
most of dull hours, to make the best of dull peo 
ple, to like a poor jest better than none, to wear 
the threadbare coat like a gentleman, to be out 
voted with a smile, to hitch your wagon to the old 
horse if no star is handy, this is the wholesome 

[23] 



FISHING WITH A WORM 

philosophy taught by fishing with a worm. The 
fun of it depends upon the heart. There may be 
as much zest in saving as in spending, in working 
for small wages as for great, in avoiding the snap 
shots of publicity as in being invariably first 
" among those present." But a man should be 
honest. If he catches most of his fish with a worm, 
secures the larger portion of his success by com 
monplace industry, let him glory in it, for this, 
too, is part of the great game. Yet he ought not 
in that case to pose as a fly-fisherman only, to 
carry himself as one aware of the immortalizing 
camera, to pretend that life is easy, if one but 
knows how to drop a fly into the right ripple. For 
life is not easy, after all is said. It is a long 
brook to fish, and it needs a stout heart and a 
wise patience. All the flies there are in the book, 
and all the bait that can be carried in the box, 
are likely to be needed ere the day is over. But, 
like the Psalmist s " river of God," this brook is 
" full of water," and there is plenty of good fish 
ing to be had in it if one is neither afraid nor 
ashamed of fishing sometimes with a worm. 

,[ FINIS ] 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



